Ontography and Alterity: Defining Anthropological Truth

Abstract

This article holds that deeply entrenched assumptions about the nature, provenance, and value of truth can be brought into view and examined critically when set against the backdrop of a radically different set of concepts and practices that are associated with truth seeking in contemporary Afro-Cuban divination. Drawing briefly on an ethnographic analysis of the ways in which Cuban cult practitioners use oracles, the article seeks to formulate a radically alternative concept of truth. This viewpoint eschews common premises about the role of 'representation' in the pursuit of truth in favor of a notion of truth as 'conceptual redefinition'. If the ethnography of divination in Cuba forces the analyst radically to reformulate the concept of truth, what effect might this new approach have on the project of anthropology itself?

New ontologies? Reflections on some recent ‘turns’ in STS, anthropology and philosophy

“…In a footnote (2013: 459–60, n6), he mentions that he thought the term was his invention, but found that it had already been used for the very kinds of ‘metaphysics’ which he aimed to avoid. While no citations are given, it is striking that Martin Holbraad () uses exactly the same term, and it is tempting to think that Lynch had accidentally come across his work. In any case, by referring to ontology as nothing but a pretentious ‘philosophy in the sky’, Lynch repeats critiques of the ontological turn in anthropology.…”

The anthropology of ontology (religious science?)

“…Independently of Ingold, Holbraad, too, appears to distance his agenda for anthropology from one kind of science while promoting wonder as a common ground for rethinking the relationship between science and an array of its possible others. As part of his contribution to the ontological turn, Holbraad () has argued for an anthropological methodology that adopts a non‐representational or ‘motile’ version of truth, a version of truth as infinitely emergent and generative of new ontologies rather than reflective of a single fixed world. This approach, he has observed, ‘puts clear blue water’ between anthropology and any mode of science that is still ‘playing at the old game of truthful representation’ (2009: 91).…”

The contested rewe: sacred sites, misunderstandings, and ontological pluralism in Mapuche land negotiations

“…As suggested by Holbraad, ‘the questions that alterity poses to us anthropologists pertain to what exists rather than what can be known. They pertain, if you like, to differences between “worlds” rather than “worldviews” (: 81‐2). An ethnographic approach to ontology, like the one proposed for the analysis of the rewe in El Roble estate, bears significant implications.…”

“…While Mapuche claimants can intentionally employ sacred sites in a strategic sense, these sites are more than mere symbols of identity. In fact they reveal the conditions of possibility for multiple ontologies: in other words, the emergence of divergent ways in which the world can be considered to exist (Henare, Holbraad & Wastell ; Holbraad ; Pedersen ; Viveiros de Castro ). Misunderstandings thus cannot be explained by simply presupposing the impossibility of mutual communication between state actors and Mapuche claimants, a scenario far from the complex forms in which Mapuche and winka, the canonical other, interact day by day in contemporary Southern Chile.…”